Each week, we'll highlight the most important Cisco partner news and stories, as well as point you to important, Cisco-related partner content you may have missed along the way. Here's what you might have missed this week:

We continue to build momentum this week as we brought January 2014 to a close. Can you believe we've already wrapped up an entire month of the New Year already? As always, here's to keeping you up to date:

Off the Top

We saw a great deal of news coming out of Milan this week at Cisco Live. I had cherry picked some blogs and announcements of interest to partners in my post this week, but that was only the tip of the iceberg. In addition to what I pulled together on Tuesday, don't miss these blogs that came out of Cisco Live this year:

• Top Things to Know About DFA Before Cisco Live Milan
• Data Center and Cloud Management Software at Cisco Live Milan
• Just Announced at Cisco Live! Milan -Cisco is Opening TrustSec Capabilities to Other Vendors
• Virtualizing the Cloud
• Autonomic Networking at Cisco Live Milano!
• Cisco Live Milan 2014 & CMX

If you don't already follow @cisco_channels on Twitter, you might have missed our nod to Karen Walker and Denny Trevett, who presented on Monday. Be sure to follow us on Twitter to stay up-to-date on all of our partner-related events.

One of the big announcements at Cisco Live this year came from Rob Lloyd's announcement of our expansion of the Cisco Cloud Portfolio to enable open and secure cloud experiences. Edison Peres dropped by the blog this week to give us an update on Hybrid IT and this latest cloud announcement from Cisco.

Evolving to Cloud and Hybrid IT

Edison has been promoting a Hybrid IT business model to partners for some time now. With customers consuming IT differently, the Internet of Everything (IoE) offers opportunity, but does require a new set of services and solutions than what our partners have traditionally provided.

Be sure to check out Edison's thoughts on how a Hybrid IT model requires partners to address these market transitions; to provide traditional IT (on premise) solutions, managed services, private/public/hybrid cloud services, packaged with professional services, and offered with different SLAs and consumption models.

In addition, Edison gave us his thoughts on how the Cisco Cloud Portfolio expansion broadens our commitment to openness and shows the unique value in the Cisco partner-led model.

Finally he talked about the new products and services in Cisco's extended cloud portfolio, which include:

• Cisco InterCloud
• Cisco Validated Design (CVD) for Cisco/Red Hat integrated Cloud Management and Provisioning
• Cisco Services for Cloud Strategy, Management, and Operations
• Cisco Intelligent Automation for Cloud (IAC) 4.0

Be sure to join in the conversation with Edison about Cisco's expanded Cloud Portfolio!

Additional Cloud Portfolio Blogs

With the news of Cisco's Cloud Portfolio expansion coming out of Milan this week, there are a few other cloud-specific blogs this week you may want to give a look:

• Cisco Announces Open and Secure Hybrid Cloud with the Collaboration of Cloud Providers and Technology Partners
• IT's New Role in Strategic Cloud Services
• Cisco InterCloud and Cisco Services: Accelerating Cloud Adoption
• Cisco's Cloud Portfolio -A Quick Overview
• Seamless Solutions for a World of Many Clouds

Congratulations

We announced the winners (CCO Login required) of our first contest for conducting customer demos using dCloud. From more than 1000 entries, three winners were randomly selected and each awarded a Cisco DX650. Thank you to all who participated and took advantage of the powerful dCloud service to easily and effectively demonstrate the power of Cisco's Collaboration solutions to your customers.

Good Reads

• Chris Botting pointed out Cisco's shipment of its one millionth IVR port
• Bob Scarbrough examined Cisco Security Intelligence Operations
• Mike Haymaker showed how Cisco Extended Care improves patient engagement
• Vshakha Radia talked collaboration and the Internet of Evrything (IoE)
• Steve Lau asked if you've hit an app wall
• Marlowe Fenne talked about increasing business investments and IT opportunities

Keep An Eye Out

• Register to attend the February 11 (Americas) or February 19 (EMEAR) sessions for updates on the Drive to Collab (formerly Drive to 9) program and Collaboration Breakaway PLUS
• Register to attend the Security Global Partner launch webcast on February 18 or 19 to hear more about our new Security Model Strategy.
• Swing by the Cisco Partner Event calendar for the latest information on Cisco partner gatherings